Fingerspelled
by simplyprologue
Summary: it quickly becomes apparent that her hearing wasn't all that she lost in Islamabad. (Season One AU.)
1. Handshape

**A/N:** This is one of those AU scenarios that randomly pops into my head, and then I turn to Meg and go "what if?" And usually it's something like, you know, "what if I drop sarin on Mac?" and Meg rants and raves about why I shouldn't do it while researching how to have Mac survive whatever I'm throwing her into because she knows I'm going to do it anyway.

Well, this time she said yes. So then I pitched it to about three more people and wrote 5,000 words and decided "fuck it, it's finals, I'll make it a two-parter." This AU starts pre-series (imagine the bombing replaces the stabbing) and will go through "Amen."

I've attempted to portray the circumstances sensitively and respectfully and have researched it to my best. But in the likely even I've fucked something up, just let me know on here or on tumblr. Italics represent sign language in this fic, not thought. I went back and forth a few times on whether to write out the signed communication in ASL grammar or not. I ultimately decided not to because I wasn't convinced I wouldn't butcher it offensively and because I wanted this fic to be accessible.

* * *

**PART ONE: HANDSHAPE**

* * *

It's more than a homemade incendiary this time but an actual bomb, and Mac finds herself on her back outside a UN food office a mile from the parliamentary building in Islamabad, the building crumbling down in front of her.

Shaking her head to clear it she rolls onto her front, pushes herself up into a sitting position, and promptly pitches forward again. Her entire body in tremors, she fumbles her the satellite phone in her pocket, jams her fingers against the buttons.

Dead, the screen shattered.

Her eyes slide in and out of focus, building the pain in her head. Every muscle in her body vibrates with pain, pulling and tensing and releasing without any sense. Looking back she sees the food office go up into flames and sucking in a deep breath, Mac crawls forward, her palms catching on debris and glass and she slowly moves herself away.

Jim.

She needs to find Jim.

Backpack sliding off her shoulder, she's forced to drag it along with her.

Her hand was on the doorknob. She had an appointment for an in with the UN Delegate in residence for the new program. She put her hand on the doorknob and the whole building exploded and now her head is unable to make sense of direction or the angle between her body and the ground and eventually Mac gives up, collapsing against a building opposite the heap that was the UN office.

She watches people swarm the burning rubble, and waits for the high-pitched ringing in her ears to fade.

Thirty minutes later, Jim grabs her shoulders, kneeling before her on the ground. _Mac. God, Mac! _Confused, she narrows her eyes, trying to focus on his lips. _Mac, look at—god, okay._

He takes her hands and puts them on her ears.

When she pulls them away and brings them before her eyes, her fingers are coated with blood.

* * *

There's the British Sign Language system, which she learned at university.

Her tenure as the President of the Cambridge Union had featured a platform with a plank dedicated to disability services, and she had done her best to learn. But now over fifteen years she's out of practice and regardless, she's American.

American Sign Language is quite different (roughly a third of the signs are identical, she learns, and less than half are cognates and she spends many of her early classes with her tutor accidentally offending him), but the specialist she sees in Landstuhl signs her up for advanced classes anyway.

(Jim, sweet Jim, enrolls as well.)

Soon Mac is deluged with books and videos and pamphlets and references to speech therapists and otologists and audiologists and, once it appears that the hearing in her right ear may have a chance of partially returning with surgery, a hearing aid specialist.

MacKenzie spends months completely deaf from the trauma of the explosion, recovering at first in a hospital room at the medical center on base and then in a hotel room not far from CENTCOM trying to keep her splintering career as a war reporter together. Jim rapidly progresses from fingerspelling to more complex phrases to understanding her entirely frustrated attempts at miming the signs she doesn't know yet, proving himself an able interpreter.

"If you trust me," she tells officers and diplomats in an uncertain voice, one hand resting on her collarbone as she tries to gauge the volume of her words. "Then you trust him."

Her lip-reading is progressing, but for the love of Jesus it's just easier to have Jim sign what they're saying and can't they just trust her on that?

It works for a little more than seven months.

Not because the hearing aid fitted to her right ear (in February, after a flight to Paris to be operated on by the best otological surgeon in the West) doesn't work (it does, restoring approximately sixty percent of her hearing provided she isn't standing in the middle of a goddamn wind tunnel, and doesn't get blown up again) but because it quickly becomes apparent that her hearing wasn't all that she lost in Islamabad.

Trembling, she stares down at the psychological evaluation in her hand.

_Displays symptoms of complex PTSD, initial symptoms of acute PTSD following the initial incident in August have not dissipated. Unfit to return to a combat zone. _

A CNN vice president asks her for her resignation two days later.

* * *

There's no interpreter at the panel at Northwestern, and between the fact that her flight from DC was late and she wasn't able to do anything but grab a seat at the back and the growing whispers and chatter from the audience, she winds up watching Will's mouth more than anything else.

It's been three years.

She's missed his voice the most, she thinks, which is wholly ironic and cruel and probably what she deserves because she can barely hear him but the way his eyes pinch and his lip curls she knows he's being flippant and sarcastic and MacKenzie can _imagine _exactly what he sounds like, _knows_ what the vibration would feel like if she laid a hand on his chest, but just _fuck _she wants to be able to _hear _him.

Even though she's unable to pick out even half of what Will's saying, she can still _see _him and how little he's changed since the very last time she saw him. The smooth mask of indifference, the angry angle to his shoulders, the off-put posture and unkempt appearance. And it's not like Mac doesn't know what the critics are writing about him, like she doesn't know the breed of inoffensive behemoth _News Night _has become in her absence. Will looks like he's given up entirely on what they used to believe in.

And then he looks directly at her.

Blinks deliberately.

Then looks again.

Her fingers bite into her thighs and craning her head she keeps an eye on him while doing her best to keep her right ear trained towards the stage. His posture changes. He relaxes. He hasn't answered a single email or voicemail or text message in three years but Will has just seen her, and relaxed.

Or perhaps she's just as crazy as CNN thinks.

But Will is—

Definitely looking at her, again.

And then: "Jealous of the size of Jay's audience."

Maybe she shouldn't have come. It was stupid, and of course he'd spot her, this isn't a large venue and she sticks out among the journalism students.

The audience laughs and she fidgets with her hearing aid, flicking the volume wheel with her fingernail and sighing when all it amplifies is the breathing of the boy sitting next to her. Will shifts uncomfortably in his seat, and in response to the moderator's unheard (to her, anyway) question, she thinks he answers, "I've voted for candidates run by both major parties."

A girl with a blonde ponytail moves to the front of the line and the microphone is turned up loud enough that she can hear her clearly. "Hi, my name is Jenny, I'm a sophomore and this for all three of you: can you say in one sentence or less—what—you know what I mean." Until, of course, the girl trips over her words and audience laughs again and it's all garbled and staticky and Mac misses her actual question.

Will looks helplessly, directly at her.

Half-panicked, shakes her head.

If it were Jim she could sign to him, but Will doesn't know any ASL, but she does have—

"The New York Jets."

The audience laughs and it takes everything to read the moderator's lips. "No, I'm gonna hold you to an answer on that. What makes America the greatest country in the world?"

There's a painfully long silence where Will says nothing at all.

Leaning down, Mac reaches for the notepad in purse and pulls out the biggest fattest marker clipped onto her binder. Faintly, she hears his answer. Mostly the tone of it, and mutters, "Come the fuck on," probably a little too loudly, if the snort from the boy sitting next to her has anything to do with it.

Large letters mean she can't scribble quickly.

But still, she holds up the words, flipping to the next page once she's certain Will's seen her.

"Well, our Constitution is a masterpiece." he says, looking away, and she huffs a sigh. "James Madison was a genius. The Declaration of Independence is for me the single greatest piece of American writing. You don't look satisfied."

The last part, of course, addressing the moderator.

Or her, considering the scowl that she knows is broadcasting clearly on her face. She holds up the first page again.

_IT'S NOT. _

"One's a set of laws and the other is a declaration of war. I want a human moment from you," the moderator demands. "What about the people? Why is it—"

Will's not looking away, his eyebrows setting his face into a look of determination tempered only by his rising frustration.

She turns the page.

_BUT IT CAN BE. _

Giving her one last hard look, he turns to the moderator, feeling his shoulders push themselves back. "It's not the greatest country in the world, Professor. That's my answer."

By the time several people have pulled out their cell phones to record, the audience has grown so loud that MacKenzie can only lip-read once more, and it grows easier by the passing minute as Will grows more and more certain, enunciating his words without regret or recompense.

Even though she can't hear him, she smiles.

Will found his voice.

* * *

Clutching her purse in front of her she follows Will into his office, waving Jim off when he goes to follow her.

"Skipper's eager," he says, rounding behind his desk.

Mac shrugs.

"He's used to having to interpret for me," she says tentatively. That's probably not all of it, but it's a good enough explanation.

Sinking down into the chair behind his desk his brows furrow together. _"Interpret?"_

Exhaling shortly, she flickers her eyes towards the ceiling tiles. Charlie didn't tell Will that she was hired in the first place, of course Charlie didn't tell Will about the explosion, and the miniscule amount of her hearing that remains.

Desperately ignoring how her hands tremble, Mac gathers her hair back from her right ear, turning her head so it, and her hearing aid, are in his line of sight.

"Traumatic hearing loss," she says, probably too gently. "I was in the blast radius of a bomb a year ago."

Will's face is inscrutable.

"And the other?" he eventually asks, gesturing to her other side.

Mac bites her lip. "Completely deaf. I mean, I was _completely deaf _until I had an ossicular reconstruction surgery in February and then now I'm—I can do my job, I mean. If you're worried about that, I'm getting quite good at lip-reading and there are closed captions on everything and the prompter and I do have sixty percent in my right ear, I can do this—"

"You're not staying," Will says abruptly, leaning back to put his feet up onto his desk. And then screwing up his face realizing how it sounds, amends, "And not because of that. I'm sure you're still the best of the best, I just can't stand seeing your face."

Barely breathing, she tries to figure out what's changed from three weeks ago.

_IT'S NOT. BUT IT CAN BE. _

She supposes the difference between now and three weeks ago is that he's had three weeks to be mired in it. He made the decision to listen to her three weeks ago and decided he didn't like the consequences of saying something of substance.

But still, she didn't let Charlie talk her into coming here, feed her lines of Cervantes bullshit, to go without a fight.

* * *

It works. And for one glorious, chaotic hour it feels like she has control over her life, before the feeling wanes and she's left signing to Jim, trying to convince him to talk to Maggie before she runs out with Don.

Will's looking at her strangely and her fingers falter. Feeling self-conscious, she crosses her arms, tucking her hands against her sides.

* * *

Mac walks with him all the way to the elevator, near tears because Will noticed he was standing on her left side and, with a gentle hand on the small of her back, stepped to her right. There's more for her to do here tonight if Will intends to let her stay, the week at least, and it appears that he does.

Still, he lingers, just looking at her even after the story about being drunk for dinner which has sent her head reeling.

"Charlie said you're physically and mentally exhausted," Will says carefully, jamming his hands into his coat pockets.

Laughing, she hugs her folio tighter to her chest and stares at her shoes.

"He managed to not mention that I was also almost blown up and, you know—"

Still looking down, she gestures at an ear.

She wonders if that's because Charlie believed her able to work with her disability or because he just wanted to get her and Will into a room together. Either way, it's nice to know that at least one of the three of them thinks that all's not lost.

Will touches her shoulder, and she looks up, intending to correct him and say that she _can _hear, and if it's just the two of them like this he doesn't really need to worry about making sure she's looking at him before speaking—but Will just touched her.

Will hasn't touched her in three years.

"That's not an answer, MacKenzie," he sighs.

Mac shrugs. "It's been a tiring year for me."

Maybe Charlie thought that Will wouldn't mind the PTSD but would think that a half-deaf EP couldn't get the job done. She could tell him. That yes, she's in a bad place. That nine months ago she was nearly killed and her hips still hurt, of all things, and she can't sleep and when she does she has nightmares and she's hypervigilant which when you only have half you hearing in one ear is _incredibly exhausting _and that learning to deal with significant hearing loss at thirty-six on top of flashbacks and panic attacks is a nexus for a total breakdown.

(Which leads to absolutely no one in broadcast news wanting you in their studio.)

Tiring.

She's never going to tell him how the night after the surgery, the night she got her hearing aid, she watched a livestream of _News Night _and cried herself to sleep.

"Yeah," Will says with a slightly awkward smile. "You can do this?"

"I just wanted to come home to a newsroom," she whispers, praying the tears she knows are in her eyes don't spill over.

"Well this one is yours, for a week," he answers, far too kindly, and the elevator doors slide open.

And then everything changes, again. Will thought she was a hallucination.

_IT'S NOT. _

Flipping her folio closed again, she bites her lip. Or maybe this could be a good thing. If Will thinks that he was the one who summoned up her presence at Northwestern, then maybe he can commit to this.

Commit to who they used to be.

Or at least what they used to do.

* * *

One week turns to two and somewhere around week eight Mac stops expecting Will to show up in her office every Friday night and tell her to pack up her office and get the fuck out.

It takes him a few more weeks after that to realize that if she tucks her hair behind her ear in the middle of one of his rants that she's actually just turning her hearing aid off. Which surprises her, because he used to be _much _more observant than that and Mac's honestly not all that subtle about it, considering that she and Jim almost always wind up signing across the conference room table to each other in the middle of his tirades.

_I think that needs to be in the B block. _

She shrugs, looking down at the name of the guest Jim currently has lined up for the interview. _I think we need a better guest and then we'll talk. _

Maggie lays her hand on her wrist, startling her.

_K-E-N-D-R-A F-O-U-N-D B-E-T-T-E-R O-N-E._

The fingerspelling is wholly clumsy and unpracticed, but Mac smiles widely anyway, folding one of her hands over Maggie's.

_O-K._

Which is roughly the moment Mac looks up at Will and notices him glaring at her, before saying her name. Biting her lip around a smile, she lifts a hand to her right ear, turning the volume on her hearing aid back up.

"You finished?" she asks.

He gapes at her. "You _turned me off?" _

Across the table from her, Jim unsuccessfully hides a smile which is only compounded when several of the staffers sitting in on the meeting snicker.

(It is funny, if only because after months of wishing desperately if she could hear his voice now she's tuning him out.)

Mac shrugs. "I'm sure many of them wish they could when you set off on one of your…" Gesturing vaguely, she ignores the indignation on his face. "Puffer-chested lectures on the morality of this or that."

Then, not even looking at Jim, _Pretend I'm saying something hilarious. _Obligingly he laughs not all too quietly, and she glances at him as he signs back, _Are you getting back at him for the Jets cheerleader or the neurosurgeon?_

Maggie, surprising them, shrugs.

_B-O-T-H._

"When the fuck did you get in on this?" Will asks.

Looking steadfastly at her notes, Maggie shrinks down in her chair. "I just figured, you know, if your boss has a hearing impediment and uses American Sign Language regularly, showing some initiative and learning ASL might not be a _terrible _idea."

Squeezing Maggie's hand, Mac leans back in her chair, ready for Will's response.

His face half-forms into a scowl, before he puts up his hands, dismissing the issue.

Clearing her throat, she looks down at her notepad.

"Can we get back to the rundown now?"

* * *

In the coming weeks, Mac notices more and more of the staff (Neal and Martin, most noticeably, practicing with Tess and Maggie and Tamara and asking Jim for demonstrations and Kendra just shows up half-fluent after a long weekend with absolutely no explanation) awkwardly forming signs and messing up the near-impossible grammar that is ASL, occasionally working up the nerve to try to converse with her in it.

After all, she almost never turns her hearing aid on before the eleven o'clock pitch meeting.

Sometimes it's the only way she gets_ anything _done in the morning.

Still, Jim is the only one she can violently and rapidly sign anything to, and usually across the bullpen after something has thrown their day into the clutches of chaos. It's easier than yelling, and has the added bonus of confusing the_ hell _out of Will, who keeps insisting upon trotting his rotating door of attractive professional women through the newsroom to teach her her lesson:

He doesn't care about her anymore.

* * *

And then there's Sloan, who keeps insisting that she go to parties where there are too many people talking and she's not quite confident enough for that yet but still she finds herself poured into a cocktail dress and brought along as Sloan's plus one to a low-key dinner party hosted by President of Columbia University.

Where she meets an Assistant District Attorney named Wade Campbell who has no problems looking at her directly and enunciating clearly and slowly.

Not that she calls Wade right away, after he tucks his business card into her clutch and gently puts his hand on her shoulder to get her attention over the din in the foyer. "I'd love to go to dinner with you, MacKenzie."

Her smile isn't even forced.

Wade is sweet, and a prosecutor, and he touches her elbow and doesn't look at her like she either needs to be coddled or praised for her situation. He's prominent without being a celebrity, powerful without having the ego.

"I'd love to, too."

* * *

Sloan had been smug and Mac would _love_ to be sure.

But it's not like Will wants her. He's made it plain what her place is, trotting his dates in front of her with stunning regularity, uniformly and almost nonchalantly refusing to learn sign language. Not that that he's obligated, she corrects herself, tunneling her hands through her hair. But if the rest of the staff has taken it upon themselves—

The control room is running more smoothly, too.

People know to pass notes, and if one person can sign while the other two are speaking at her one semi-functioning ear it makes her life easier.

Would it kill him to learn the letters, at least? That could be of actual _use _during the broadcast.

It's not like she expected Will to love her.

It's just the fact that she still loves _him. _

And know that she knows that she can be a mostly-deaf EP and a damn good one at that, that the explosion hasn't ruined her entire worth or consigned her to running copy or something equally insulting, she's back to the daily reminders of how she ruined _Will's _life. She bows her head and takes the punishments. After all, she was also the one who ran away from the consequences initially, and now she should take them.

He isn't going to fire her.

But he also isn't going to forgive her.

Maybe the best she can hope for is that they can work together, and do the show well. It's not a _bad _goal, by any stretch. But even now she wonders, if Will thought she was a hallucination at Northwestern, then has he truly moved on?

MacKenzie chides herself.

_Don't be a fucking idiot. He just thinks you were the ghost of executive producers past. _

Regardless, she hasn't been on a first date in over five years.

She needs to start somewhere.

Sighing, she picks up Wade's business card and dials the cell phone number he scratched onto the back in blue ink preparing to explain that yes, she can use a phone, it has an amplifier on it and oddly enough, if she puts it to the _hearing _ear it all works out in the end—

Trying not to think about the fact that one of the things she's starting to love (one of the many, many things in addition to the pile of details and minutiae and traits she already does) about Will since she's come back is that he never assumes what she can or cannot do.

She hears the phone pick up on the other end.

"Hello?"

* * *

She wonders if it's a comfort to Will, that she's seeing someone. He definitely_ talks _to her more. Maybe he's not worried about her tripping after him, trying to get him to forgive her and fall in love with her again.

It's a new normal, but isn't it all?

"I can hear you, you know," she deadpans, a pretzel halfway to her mouth. It's only been ten minutes since the two o'clock rundown meeting, so he can't have missed her, so Mac wonders what he wants. "You're six-foot-four and over two hundred pounds. Speaking of which, I heard that you're not coming to the New Year's party."

"That was a terrible segue."

Will steals a handful of pretzels out of her bag before sitting down in the chair opposite her desk.

"That was a terrible attempt at surprising me," she retorts, studiously ignoring the theft of her food.

Will balks around a mouthful, and she knows to turn her head because there's no chance in hell he's going to chew and swallow before retorting.

"I wasn't trying to—"

Not the argument she wants to be having.

"You're not coming to the party?" she asks pointedly, looking up from the _Times _and jabbing the tip of her pink highlighter in his direction. "The rest of the staff will be there. I don't think anyone will care if you bring a plus one, if that's what you're worried about. Jim is bringing Lisa, Neal has Kaylee, I have Wade—"

But Will, of course, the master deflector.

"He's not invited to the DA's party?" he asks, leaning back in his chair with an entirely too-smug grin on his face.

Her answering smile is tight. "He offered to come with me to ours. Since ACN is our family."

Honestly, she had expected Wade to decline and go off to his own parties for the night. Four months of dating doesn't bound anyone to spending the holidays together. (Except Will, but she's trying very hard to not think about that.) But Wade wants to come along and meet the rest of the staff and she _likes _Wade, she really does, she's just waiting for that spectacular moment of revelation like she had with Will.

"Does he really think you're British?" Will asks, reaching forward steal more pretzels.

She bats his hand away. "Well, I did go to Cambridge and I do have the accent—"

(And not everyone is as interested in the finer points of how she's decided her nationality as Will was when they first started dating. Because, well, first of all it's an incredibly long story and she has to explain how she and Jamie were born here and then her sisters were born in Greece and Berlin and Moscow and then she came back to Manhattan with them for boarding school while Jamie went to boarding school in London, and she went to Cambridge to be closer to her brother and—

It's really just a big mess of McHale family tree branches and it makes her sound like a privileged brat.)

Offended now, Will makes a show of stealing the entire bag out from under her. "Mac you've always told everyone that you're an American. You literally beat it into someone once."

"I've known him four months."

"I knew you were American on the first day."

Slowly, and with a degree of showmanship, he slowly puts a pretzel into his mouth.

Mac is thirty seconds away from strangling him.

But instead she sighs. "You also let everyone know you're from Nebraska within ten minutes of meeting them."

He throws up his hands in a gesture that she knows is supposed to convey _but that makes total sense!_ but precariously resembles an incredibly loose interpretation of the signs for _do you spit or swallow? _and she snorts because he obviously already knows the answer to _that _question.

Will's undoubtedly smartass reply is cut off when Jim knocks on her office door while opening it. With a frown on his face, holds the door open by leaning on it and asks, _There was a suicide bombing in Peshawar targeting high-ranking Afghan officials. Several marines were killed in the blast. I got it from Noah and it'll hit the wires in ninety minutes._

She nods. _Divide them into teams. _

_You okay? _Jim schools his face into a very nonchalant expression.

Rolling her eyes, she waves him off. _I can handle this. Go away. Can I call Noah? _

_Yes, _he answers. _You sure you're okay? _

_Whatever, _she signs back with a shrug before breaking eye contact. Used to being dismissed by her by now, Jim leaves, shutting the door behind him.

Sighing heavily, she folds her arms under her chest, staring at the bag of pretzels Will has ceded back to her desk.

"Why does he have to do that?" he asks.

Her voice is quiet. "Habit."

"What did he say?" And then, because she's still not looking at him, asks again.

Swallowing, she wipes any trace of anxiety from her face and smiles, reaching for her phone where it's sitting in her bag under her desk. "I have to call one of our military sources. There was an explosion Peshawar and it's going to be in the A block."

"Mac?"

Will reaches for her hand, assuming again that she didn't hear him, and she startles.

"Yes, Will?"

Uncertain and awkward, he lets go of her hand, and stands.

"Just keep me updated."

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**


	2. Phonemics

**A/N: **And, the second half. I'm four out of five finals down, with my last one being Monday afternoon. And Spanish, which I'm great at, so I don't really need to study and I feel so free. By which I mean I got home from my contemporary political theory final at 5 after a pitstop at Starbucks, planted myself on the couch next to the Christmas tree, and started writing.

Thanks to Meg and Pippa and Emily and Lisa for seeing me through. To **Sarah**, there really was a bombing in Peshawar in January 2011, targeting a delegation of officials from Afghanistan sent to negotiate tribal disputes in the FATA region. If I didn't come out of _Holding On and Letting Go _without knowing where Peshawar was, that'd be pretty pathetic, right? ;)

Phonemics: the linguistic study of phenomes, or the smallest part of a word that differentiates it from others. Kind of like how changing one tiny thing can birth an entire AU.

* * *

**PART TWO: PHONEMICS**

* * *

The first time she woke up in Landstuhl, she was confused. There had never been silence before like it. Grimacing, she lifted a hand to her head, pressing her palm to the gauze wrapped around her forehead and to her ears.

Her vision swam, pain pulsing behind her eyes, even in the low light.

Synapses in her brain fired nowhere to nowhere and the IV line in her arm prickled but nothing quite beat the continuous pounding at her temples. For a long moment, unable to turn her stiff neck, she wondered if she was alone.

And then Jim dodged into her line of vision, and handed her the first note he had written in large blocky letters on a piece of loose leaf.

_Do you remember what happened? _

"There was a bomb," she answered once her eyes focused long enough to read the words, and then jerked in her hospital bed when she could feel her voice in her throat, but the silence continued.

Jim smiled nervously, handing her the next piece of paper.

_You have a concussion. You have some hearing loss._

Swallowing hard, she managed to shake her head. "Not just some." Blinking back tears, she looked directly at Jim for as long as her eyes would allow. "Is it permanent?"

He ripped another piece of paper out of his notebook, writing on it before showing it to her.

_They don't know. _

She smiled wanly. "I guess it's good you didn't get there early like I asked."

And so she didn't even grieve. She just enrolled in ASL classes and tried to keep running, from Will and to wherever her feet would carry her.

* * *

She's put up with the gossip blog. She's put up with _Page Six. _Landing himself on the cover of _TMI _with the cover reading_ My Night With Will McAvoy: Sex, Drugs, and Guns _in big yellow letters is _not_ something that MacKenzie is willing to put up with.

The steadily rotating door of attractive women is one thing. Having one of his dates go to Nina Howard with a report that he'd leveled a gun at her while high off his ass is a whole other level of "be ready to be featured on every late night show and have your credibility peeled off of you like a second skin" that she _cannot _believe she's being forced to endure.

But that's not what she's focusing on at the moment.

(For the most part, anyway.)

It doesn't make any sense. She _knows _Scott. There's no _way _Scott would let Will sign a contract with a noncompete clause unless…

Forcing herself to remain calm, it takes all her months of speech therapy to get her voice to remain level. "Hang on. You'd never allow a noncompete clause in your contract. You couldn't stay off the television for five minutes."

Will freezes, looking back at her.

"It got," he starts, and then looks away. "Put in."

Of course.

"When?" she asks, keeping her face and voice coolly neutral. _"When, _Will?_"_

"When I renegotiated my contract," he answers quietly, after a long pause.

It takes each and every of her twenty-six months of reporting from combat zones to remain calm. "To be able to fire me at the end of each week."

There's a longer pause this time, and she can see Will struggling to come up with an excuse, a way out, a solid lie.

"Yeah."

Will hates her so much that he's willing to ruin his career just to be able to ruin her.

MacKenzie is willing to put up with a lot. But if Will is just going to continue self-destructing in the hopes that he can bring her along with him, she's not going to stay and watch. But that's not what has tears threatening the integrity of her vision.

She still loves him.

Crossing her arms she plows out of his office, ignoring the way she knows Charlie and Don are looking at her, ignoring the defenses she knows are rising on Will's tongue—they're all valid, she'll give him that. She's the cheating ex-girlfriend who was brought here against his will. He had every right to find a way to get rid of her.

Will follows her out, for whatever reason, reaching for her wrist which she promptly yanks out of his grasp, whirling around to face him.

"Jesus_ Christ_ how much do you hate me?"

"I don't _hate _you," he counters, pouting.

She's in love with a twelve year old.

"You allowed a noncompete clause in your contract?" she wails. "Three years—you were willing to stay off TV for _three years? _When was the last time an anchor stayed off TV for three years and ever came back?"

Will cross his arms, no longer exactly looking at her which only encourages her to take a step closer, raise her voice just a bit louder. Everyone knows already. anyway. And what's the point of fighting with him if they're not going to fight about the same thing that's been hanging over their head for three and a half years now?

"Have revenge sex with every woman in the tri-state area for all I care but keep it out of goddamn newspaper," she seethes. "Some of us have moved on."

Or should. She really, really should.

"Yeah, you've mentioned that," Will says shortly.

"I can leave," she says, hands flurrying around her face and she has to stop herself from signing along with what she's saying, reminding herself that just because she's panicking doesn't mean that she needs to do this. But it's almost Pavlovian at this point, to connect this level of anxiety to being deaf. "You can do the same show another producer."

For a few seconds he stares at her, unblinking, before responding.

"We can have that discussion."

"Why don't we have it right now?"

This conversation is going oddly similar to the way they broke up.

But it boils down to this: Will's not all in. Of course he's not. He's not the same person he was three, four years ago. And neither is she. So maybe it was nice of Charlie to try, but this was never going to work.

"Yeah," Will says, unfolding his arms when she decides that this should be moved back into his office and brushes past him.

Across the bullpen, she sees Jim in the conference stand, a look of dampened concern on his face. _Do you need me? _he asks, and she halts.

"Yeah. Some of us moved on three and a half years ago and forgot to tell me," Will continues, turning on his heel to follow her, and then notices she's stopped, following her line of vision. "And—Jesus, would you stop doing that?"

"Doing what?" she asks, ire rising as she gives Jim the sign to just _hold on. _

Jim shrugs, still looking at her uncertainly when Will says, "Your secret language, the constant hand signals across the room—"

Her head snaps back to Will, and she narrows her eyes. "They're not _secret hand signals _perhaps if you bothered to give a damn and learn—"

"You hear fine, Mac!" he yells, exasperated.

For several prolonged heartbeats she can't breathe. Without thinking, her hand fumbles for her hearing aid, her fingers skirting along the hook over the back of her ear.

To his credit, Will realizes what he's said nearly as soon as he's said it.

But she still feels anger rising and breaking over her and just like Mac can't fathom ever telling him about the night in the private hospital in Paris after the surgeon was able to give her some of her hearing back she can't fathom explaining to him what it was like waking up in the military medical center in Germany, communicating with Jim on endless pieces of paper as absolutely no one would commit to telling her whether or not she'd ever hear again.

The pure _terror _that she felt for _weeks_, until Jim started catching on to ASL and for the first time in a month she wasn't _alone_.

"No, I fucking don't!" she screams.

And then, fingers still on the hook of her hearing aid, rips it out of her ear and curls it into her palm.

The world goes silent, and she can see the _fuck _form on Will's lips.

"I really fucking don't because you see, without this, I'm getting ambient noise out of one ear because eighteen months ago I was five feet away from a bomb when it went off, shattering the bones in my middle ear," she says, because she's sure Charlie never told him and she's sure Will never went looking for the news reports on the UN bombing. "Do you know how many bones are in there? Three."

She holds up her fingers directly to Will's face, and she would smile at the fact that she's managed to surprise him if she wasn't so furious.

"The malleus, the incus, and the stapes. The surgeon in Paris was able to partially reconstruct the malleus and the incus. The hammer and the anvil." She can feel her voice wavering and she knows she's yelling but has no idea how loud; she presses her hand to her throat, fingers still curled tightly around her hearing aid. Will looks afraid, and all she can think is _good_ so for maybe half a minute he can think about how afraid she's been the past year.

"I couldn't hear a goddamn thing for _seven months. _I still can't—_sixty percent in one ear _Will, and you can't be bothered to stay out of the tabloids or learn how to fingerspell."

Will is speaking and she can't be bothered to try to figure out what he's saying because this is it, right? They're going to have a discussion about her leaving. So maybe she should just get all of this out before she walks out of his life again.

"Without this," she says, and his lips stop moving when she holds up the hearing aid to nearly his eye level. "I'm stuck trying to read your lips and for a man who's paid to be on TV five nights a week you mumble a whole fucking lot!"

He says something, and her eyes despite everything see _you know it's not like that—_before she looks at his eyes, not his mouth and her hands rise and she starts signing along with what she's saying.

"No Will, I can't hear you right now. Isn't that a joy?" Her voice falls, by what measure she can't say. "So how about _you_ _read my lips_—"

Someone tugs on her arm and she jumps, huffing.

It's Maggie.

"_What?" _

Hands shaking, Maggie looks directly at her, clumsily figuring through the handshapes of the alphabet after she forgets the sign for Congress.

"Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords," she says slowly, fingerspelling it out, "has been shot in the head at an event in Tucson."

An eerie calm settling over her, MacKenzie slides her hearing aid back into place.

* * *

And then with no explanation, Will is all in, sending Reese back to the forty-fourth floor.

"Mac get in here with Charlie right now."

"Is everything—"

"Right now," he interrupts sharply, staring down at his cards.

Nearly tripping over herself, Mac follows Charlie out of the control room and into the studio and by the time she's situated out of frame she can tell Will is angry. But he points directly at Charlie.

"You tell Leona that if she wants me out of this chair, she better bring more than just a couple of guys."

Charlie is stunned for a moment, but quickly recovers. "That's exactly what I'll fuckin' tell her."

"I'm not _fucking around _Charlie!" Will shouts, gesturing, and Mac is no longer (and quite possibly was never) certain of what she's witnessing.

"Feet of fucking steel."

Then Will looks directly at her.

"Mac—"

She regrets it. Not that it's a new feeling, always thrumming, pounding like a pulse inside her ears. "I'm sorry—"

"It's not your fault."

He throws his hands wide, trying to reassure her.

"—I fucked everything up!" she yells, eyes watering. Because it is _her, _constantly unable to calculate consequences and the blast radiuses of emotional explosions and she _thought _she and Will were strong enough to tell him about Brian but it was only because she wasn't smart enough to keep away from Brian, or strong enough to keep her mouth shut.

"It's gonna be alright."

His blue eyes wide and honest, hair slightly mussed (she tamps down on the urge to run to the desk and brush the errant wave back into place), she almost believes him.

* * *

After _Sex, Drugs, and Whatever the Fuck Was the Third Thing_ he keeps his womanizing out of the tabloids and the newsroom. Mac doesn't know if Will is just dating more discreet women, or if he's settled on one, or what. But the spectacle of polished professional women looking for a bankroller ends on that low note and every Tuesday marks another week where Will's face isn't splashed on the cover of a tabloid.

Wade brings her to more and more events, galas and speaking engagements and opulent parties, and it's a little bit like being on Will's arm, except no one knows who she is where Wade brings her.

(It's funny, but she was always the more famous out of her and Will at award shows. Will is the face of ACN, but she's the brains and at the Peabodys and National Press Awards its _her _who gets the attention and it all balances out because Will has the Correspondents' Dinner and the Emmys and with Wade she's the inspiration porn girlfriend who can move her hands as a party trick, and everyone thinks it's oh-so-adorable that Wade is _trying _and _learning _to sign.

More often than not, it's frustrating.

And then proudly Wade tells whoever they're in front of that she's an executive producer, and he's been on the show _one-two-three-four-five _times and CNN is looking at him, too, and local affiliates at ABC and CBS.)

It's almost like before.

Just with the wrong man.

(But that's like before, too, but MacKenzie already knows she's good at making mistakes over and over again and somewhere along the line turning them into the right thing, maybe.

Hopefully.

It's not like she has to _marry _Wade.)

And it's all going so well until Charlie pulls her and Will out of a pitch meeting and tells her that Wade is being looked at for a congressional run and then she's back on uneven ground, trying to convince Will that she _didn't mean it like this_—

"No one in his right mind would risk losing you."

Will leaves the room before she can react.

Which is a good thing, because she has no idea what to say.

* * *

Almost like clockwork, Tony Hart gets in on the game. But of course, if Charlie worked it out then so did the Lansings and Tony has always had a thing against Will and so while she's hardly surprised it's mostly her fault, for selecting _staff _instead of _Sloan. _But at least that time she only indicted herself.

Because it's easier to walk the thirty feet between her offices than wait for Will to yell her name, she winds up leaning into his doorframe, biting her lip as she waits for the explosion.

"She really wasn't ashamed to say she had Bieber fever?" Will says gently, posture unchanged.

If she looked at her BlackBerry, she'd have four missed calls, seven text messages, and one email from Wade. At some point she'll hear him out, and she doubts it will help convince her that this isn't entirely her fault.

"It's alright," he says, even more gently.

Her eyes draw to the carpet and while every cell in her body is telling her to flee, Mac just wants to stand here a while longer, and let Will tell her everything will be _just fine _even though nothing is ever _just fine _when women like her are put into this position.

"Now _I'm _the one putting us in the tabloids," she murmurs, exhaling harshly.

"I'm more pissed that he insinuated that you can't do your job. Anyone who knows you knows that you're infuriatingly stubborn," he answers evenly.

_Now, I'm sure Ms. McHale is a fine reporter, but all things considered I don't think she's fit for the control room anymore. _

"I think Tony was insinuating that you're just a love-stricken imbecile."

_Not that I have anything against deaf people, or the disabled community, but how can a woman with traumatic hearing loss do a job that involves listening to anywhere from three to ten people at one given moment? I think Will McAvoy is in over his head. Or head over heels—_

"That too."

"And I'm the incompetent adulterous whore with an agenda," she comments, trying to be calm, trying to be even. She should be, everything's been going wrong for four years now, all at her own hand. She should be used to this by now. And then, without knowing why she says it, and definitely not looking at Will, she adds, "Which is, in fact, not far off from what Brian called me once, so kudos to them."

_So what? You're going to ride his dick all the way to the control room? Mac, be less transparent. _

"Mac?" Will asks, startled.

Still looking down at the floor, she mumbles, "Not everyone is as nice as you, Billy."

Then heads back to her office to continue ignoring Wade's attempts at communicating with her.

* * *

By lunchtime it's not just ACN Morning its _Vanity Fair _and half a dozen editorials and shortly after lunch it's Nina Howard who, she's certain, has dug up reports on the bombing and deduced that there were threats, credible threats, made by the TTP against the officials working in the UN office and she sent Jim there anyway.

_Oh fuck it. _

She sees it in her sleeping hours enough anyway.

Let the story run.

* * *

Eventually she tells Wade to meet her after the broadcast. After reading his emails and texts, after listening to his voicemails. After the universe hands her _one more fucking thing _and the battery of her hearing aid shorts out twenty minutes into the broadcast (the pack of Duracells in her purse is empty, of course, and so is the one in her desk) and Mac has to debate the finer merits of lip-reading and relying on the instant closed-captioning being accurate and if maybe Tony Hart wasn't right.

_You deserved a lot better_, Jim signs to her after telling her that Wade is waiting.

Laughing a little, she squints at unmoving lips of the guest that Will is interviewing, and then sighs.

_I deserved what I got, _she replies, turning away from the screen and unclipping her mic kit.

She's useless.

Touching Jim's elbow, she asks, _Can you finish out the show for me? _

Like always, he nods and sets himself to the task.

* * *

Wade is waiting on the balcony, and she goes out into the snow and frigid temperatures in just her cardigan. The wind is howling, she supposes, snow blowing into her face and being this high above the ground can't help.

She knows her stilettos on the concrete make enough noise to alert him to her presence, so she waits for him to turn around.

At first he plays the fool.

But for all she's already been humiliated and humbled today, she doesn't have time for that, nor room left to tell him to speak slowly, to try to use what little ASL he has to talk to her. MacKenzie has pride enough left for that.

"This was never gonna work you and me. You wasted my time," he says, and she refuses to let herself shiver, to admit that she is anything but immune to his words, to the cold, to all of it. "So I got something out of it. Some screen time so I'm not a complete nobody, the pretty and deaf girlfriend to score points with the disability activists—"

Which is the moment she decides she doesn't need to find out the rest of his speech.

"In this order: leave, lose the election, go to hell."

She lost Will four years ago.

She's still losing.

* * *

Will's hand touches her waist; she almost made all the way back to her office without anyone stopping her.

But, of course—

"Where did you go, you were gone the whole last block?" he asks, once she's jerked herself around to face him.

His eyes narrow.

"What's wrong?"

"The battery in my hearing aid shorted out," she tries to say. "I couldn't be of any use in the control room, so I just—"

"Yeah… that's not it."

His office is closest, so that's where they wind up and she stands where he leads her, rooted to the floor with her arms awkwardly wrapped around her folio, pressing it to her chest where she already feels too exposed, too vulnerable.

If she keeps standing here like this, he'll have to leave her alone, because she can't hear him and if she keeps looking down—

Will's fingers curl under her chin, and he lifts her head until they lock eyes.

"Mac?"

She sighs.

"Wade met with the D-triple-C five times. He's running for Congress. So I broke up with him. Just now."

"I'm sorry."

"No you're not," she mumbles, rubbing a hand over the pulsing at the front of her head, _not looking _at him again because if she looks she won't be able to keep talking and sometimes silence is the kindest gift of all. "Right. I forgot. You only like it when you're the one upsetting me. Punishing me. Whatever. I'm fine, I've learned my lesson, I've gotten precisely what I've deserved, six months of someone using me."

It's not a Friday, but maybe he'll keep this in mind for the end of the week.

Will doesn't like talking about the break-up, or the three years she was gone.

Maybe if she just keeps talking, Mac thinks, but she honestly has no idea what to say after today. All she knows is that tomorrow will be worse, with Nina Howard's article on the front of _TMI _calling her incompetent and dangerous and if _News Night _is to have any credibility at all before the week is out, he should just fire her now.

"I'm just—just leave me alone," she says, looking up at him briefly.

Just long enough to catch his lips form the words, "We're in my office."

So she tries to leave. But again, Will's hand is gentle on her waist, pulling her back to him. His hands frame her middle, holding her in front of him. _Gently_, of course, because Will would never hold a woman in place, and it's his gentleness that keeps her, makes her lift her eyes to his face so she can lip-read what he's saying.

"You didn't deserve that," he says slowly, and Mac is grateful she can't hear the tone of his voice.

She knows he sounds like he did this morning.

Shrugging, she tries to keep eye contact. "I turned out to be the woman with access to airtime and the deaf girlfriend to earn brownie points with the voters."

Will's entire demeanor changes, his face hardening, his shoulders dropping, his fingers curling in against her sweater.

"Wait, he—brownie points?"

"I think he said _score points,_ actually, but I was lip-reading, so I don't know."

For a long moment, Will just gapes at her.

"I'm going to make sure he loses that election." He lets go of her waist, not quite stepping around her but stepping back, moving towards the door. "Actually if he's still in the building, I'll—"

"No." She steps with him, forward as he goes backwards, not quite reaching out for him but not quite letting him go.

"No, I'm not letting him get away with using you like this," he says, or so she assumes, telling him to slow down. He does, looking at her with a determined set to his features. "I'm going to put his head through a wall."

She takes one deep breath and then another, blinking back the tears that suddenly burn her eyes.

"I got what I deserved," she tells him, not as coolly as when she told Jim, her cheeks coloring at the strain she can feel in her throat.

Will stops.

"Why did you go to Peshawar?" he asks, slowly and carefully forming the words, so she can't pretend to not understand him.

"I don't know."

Her voice isn't steady, she can feel it wavering in her throat.

(There's no good way to explain what it's like to have thirty-seven years of pride on how you speak, practicing inflection and diction and the way you shape your syllables so you become a good interviewer, acceptable on-air talent, a formidable journalist—to take all that and have it reduced to vibrations you press your fingers against your throat to feel.

This is what she hated the most about those seven months, the sudden and violent lesson about how important vocal cues are and just how easily she began forgetting people's voices until they were distant echoes.

Including her own.

There's no good reason to explain that she watched _News Night _after the surgery _because she had forgotten what Will sounds like._ How do you forget how the man you loves speaks? The bare bones of his accent remained, the general shape of the words, even the timber.

But his voice was gone.)

Gentle again, by choice, Will pushes the backs of his index and middle fingers under her chin.

"Look at me."

Voice failing her, MacKenzie shakes her head.

"Yes you do."

Will looks at her so softly. "What did you deserve when you sent yourself to Peshawar? Mac?"

The world silent and still, she shatters.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, she's shaking. Dehydrated, possibly, and cold. Standing in Will's bathroom where he brought her when it became apparent that the crying wouldn't stop after five minutes, seven, ten.

She hasn't cried like this in years, didn't cry like this when she first woke up in Landstuhl, has no idea why she's crying like this _now _when at some point the intern she sent out in search of the proper battery for her hearing aid will return.

All she wants right now is to hear Will's voice and she _can't _so instead they're standing in his bathroom, his arms wrapped all the way around her while as it comes and goes in waves, the calm settling for a minute or two before the sobs resurface, grief shaking her in a way it distinctly _didn't _in the aftermath of the explosion.

Cheek pressed to his chest, she can feel him speaking.

* * *

When she finally calms, and stays calm, she realizes why Will was talking. Stepping out of the circle of his arms, she looks to where her folio fell to the floor when she at last gave up her grip on it.

Open, laying against the tile.

_IT'S NOT._

And then she's not breathing at all.

Following her gaze, Will stoops to pick it up off the floor, folding the notepad so that it stays open before resting it atop the sink. The tears rise again almost immediately, her breath hitching.

_You were there._

Mouth dropping open, her eyes go from his hands to his face back to his hands. _When did you learn to…? _

_Our F-I-G-H-T last M-O-N-T-H had a point, didn't it? _His signing is unpracticed and unfluid as he struggles to push through letters and then the pointed gestures. Slow, and jerky, but deliberate. _If I want to keep you around, I learn to sign? _

"Oh."

Her mind forces the word through her lips without a thought.

Will is undeterred, if not thoroughly awkward. But she knows he doesn't like to do things that make him vulnerable, or look unpolished and imperfected, but he's doing this for her and she has to press her fist to her mouth to prevent a sob from escaping.

_You had a good point. I hired a T-U-T-O-R. I want to keep you around. You were at N-O-R-T-H-W-E-S-T-E-R-N. Why didn't you tell me? _

_I wanted to see you,_ she responds, biting her lip to prevent a descent back into crying, reminding herself to keep to beginner signs and self-explanatory ones._ I thought you saw me. And then when I realized you hadn't I didn't want you to be mad at me. _

Swallowing, Will turns the notepad to the next page. _BUT IT CAN BE. _His fingers trace the letters, and she would give anything to know what he's thinking, but his face is inscrutable.

_You didn't D-E-S-E-R-V-E what W-A-D-E did, _he signs eventually.

She shrugs. _Well, he was right. I was just—_

_Just what?_

_I… _Her hands stutter in front of her, uncertain.

"Mac."

Will lifts a hand to stroke her cheek, brushing away fresh tears. Closing her eyes, she lets that be all she knows for a few seconds. Across Afghanistan and Pakistan she'd been left wishing she had just _slowed down _back in Manhattan, committed Will better to memory.

Sighing, she looks at his face. _I mean that I never moved on from you. I know you don't believe me, but I didn't tell you about Brian to break up with you. I had never been in relationship as serious as ours and I thought that's what I was supposed to do and I—_

_Too fast, _he signs, unable to decide if he should look at her hands or at her, but he's given up the look of absolute indifference whenever she speaks about this and maybe that's enough.

A shuddering exhale escapes between pursed lips and she slows herself, soothes her shivering nerves and trembling hands. Exhaling again, she begins to speak as she signs. _I can't tell you why I went back to Brian when we were first dating. All I know is that I fell in love with you and then I ruined it and I ran away from it and now I'm—I'm like this. I hurt you brutally and it's my fault. _

_I've hurt you too, _is his quick and clumsy reply.

She rolls her eyes. _I deserved it._

_No, you didn't. _His body juts forward, posture sure, even as he stares at his hands, shaping them into disjointed words.

Wilting, her lips tug into a smile that feels preemptively defeated. _But, I love you. I haven't moved on. And Wade knew. That's why he—_

His hands stop talking and instead slide into her hair, and half a breath later his mouth is on hers. Her fingers splutter out _—broke up with me,_ before her arms wrap around his waist, and she pulls herself flush against him.

What starts out of desperate quickly becomes measured, urgent but not hasty. His tongue traces her lower lip and she opens her mouth to him, trying very hard to ignore that anyone could walk into his office right now but very much not wanting to this kiss to end. Convinced, perhaps, that she's not going to flee, Will's hands move from her hair to her waist, to her hips, very briefly to her ass before resting safely on the small of her back.

Abruptly, he pulls back, looking at her with a stunned expression on his face.

Then nervously, he looks at his watch. _I have to go. I have to meet with someone, but I'll be back. Soon. _

Blinking rapidly, she tries to catch his hand in hers. "Wait, what—"

But he's already gone.

* * *

It's Gary who suggest that Will's gone to meet with Nina Howard (or a date, she thought originally, because she just dumped Wade so she can hardly fault him for finding someone to get into bed with on Valentine's Day although now it seems he's been spending his evenings pursuing something other than women) and Mac believes that she's going to strangle him until Neal tells her that corporate didn't pay for Amen's release.

That someone _did. _

(That being said, if Will throws another fifty-thousand to keep her face off a _tabloid cover_ on top of the quarter of a million he's paid to prevent Amen from _being held and tortured,_ she might actually kill him.

It's a sweet thought, but she'll kill him.

She's crafty. She can do it.)

Five minutes after Will leaves the intern she sent out to CVS returns, and as quickly as she can rip open the packaging on the batteries, her hearing returns (as much as it's going to, that is) and as she's listening to Neal worry about Will paying money to terrorists, she gets an idea.

* * *

Standing fifteen feet or so away from her with his hands on his hips, Will surveys the long line of staffers with checks in hand before turning around to face her.

_I fucked everything up, _she signs slowly, because they still have so much they need to talk about.

_It's going to be alright, _he signs back.

(A kiss doesn't solve their problems, but it's start.)

MacKenzie does her best not to notice Maggie elbowing Tess and Tamara, gesturing to the fact that Will has become proficient in ASL.

She _definitely _ignores the staff's reactions (Neal's wide grin, Jim's affronted look of shock, Martin's gasp) when without missing a beat, Will signs, _You were spectacular tonight. I never stopped loving you. _

A wide smile splitting her face, she steps into his arms again.

* * *

"You didn't give her any money?" she asks, holding Will's arm captive where it's slung across her breasts.

His breath his hot in her ear, whistling in her hearing aid when he sighs. "I paid Nina Howard absolutely nothing. Do I have to show you the voided check?"

Yes.

"I—no."

Laughing, he nuzzles the side of her face, curling himself more tightly around her side. It's strange; he's always slept on the left side of the bed. But if she wants to lie on her back, like it's more comfortable too since the explosion, a hip abduction pillow between her legs, then he needs to be on her right.

They'll talk. Not tonight, when they're satiated and sleepy and half-euphoric, but sometime soon. They _are _talking, just not about anything that can't be spoken about in low tones, their faces inches apart.

Will presses his mouth to her shoulder, trails a chain of kisses up her neck.

"You can keep talking, you know," she says, lifting a hand to stroke his hair. "I may talk a big game, but I kind of like it when you don't shut up."

"Are you sure you want me to know that?" he asks, snorting.

Humming, Mac combs down where she's assuming she's aggravated his cowlick.

"When I woke up from surgery in Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, and they put in the hearing aid for the first time, I was so overwhelmed," she begins, her nails scratching lightly over his scalp. "I spent half a year in absolute silence. If you're unprepared for that, it's just… and I spent months wishing I had called my mother one last time, or listening to one song, and for the longest time I wished I had been able to hear your voice."

The back of her throat burns, and she stares at her ceiling until it passes.

To his credit, Will says nothing, just fans his fingers out over her belly, his hand spanning from the divot of her pelvis to her ribcage.

"So after my mother and sisters went back to their hotel, I got out my laptop. It was two in the morning and it took a little finagling but I found a livestream of _News Night. _I had almost forgotten what you sound like. I couldn't live having forgotten," she finishes quietly, turning her head towards him when he makes an indistinct noise. "What?"

He kisses her cheek.

"Before Northwestern, I'd almost forgotten your face. Not that I wouldn't be able to recognize you, but I couldn't remember the exact shape of your nose, the way your eyes crinkle up when you smile. The little freckle, here." Leaning up on his elbow, he moves his hand from her stomach to where her jaw meets her ear, and then traces the slope of her jaw down to her chin. "I thought you were a hallucination. That I saw someone who looked enough like you for my brain to backfill all the details. As much as I… that scared me. That I could have forgotten what you looked like."

Looking down at her, he studies her face before leaning down to brush his lips against hers.

"But it was me," she murmurs..

Will laughs quietly.

"But it was you."

She falls asleep not long after his soft-spoken proclamation.

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**


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